


Talkin' Dynamic Metamorphism Blues

by duccello



Series: Gem Caste Uprising [1]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Chaotic neutral mercenary lapis, Crystal Gems, F/F, Gem Caste Uprising, Gen, Homeworld - Freeform, Lapis/Amethyst kinda?, Older!Connie, Past!Pearlrose, Revolution, backstory speculation, love fusion acceptance movement, older!steven, pearl uprising, pearlmethyst - Freeform, rupphire, um
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 19:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5261300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duccello/pseuds/duccello
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight years after current SU canon--Yellow Diamond's invasion has been and gone, and the Crystal Gems have managed to secure earth's permanent sovereign status. Steven is 17 years old, has one saving of the world under his belt, and is ready to settle into a routine of defending Beach City from monsters. But when the Crystal Gems make contact with some old allies, it's obvious that Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl have unfinished business on homeworld, so a family road trip is in order to get it all sorted out.<br/>Garnet is seeking acceptance for love fusions like her and justice for her fellow soldiers whose remains were desecrated for the cluster experiments. Pearl intends to avenge the thousands of years of mistreatment she went through before she met Rose, and maybe find a modicum of closure too. Amethyst discovers the "family history" of Kindergarten gems like her and tries to puzzle out what it says about who she really is. Connie learns about other species colonized by gems and resolves to seek justice for them as Rose and Steven did for earth. Steven searches for a side of his mother he's only seen glimpses of.<br/>Greg provides the soundtrack, which is more important than it sounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Place They Call The Planet Earth

**Author's Note:**

> The companion to this fic is "I'll Be Your Mirror", a prequel which will update in tandem with it (unlike this fic, which deals with the whole main cast of the show, the prequel is centered mostly on Amethyst and Pearl and introduces my rogue pearl OCs, who appear in this fic as well).

In a file stored on an information drive in a vault on the fourth planet of the fourth sun of the gem homeworld system, there is stored a certain message—a message once mundane enough to be forgotten, now reviled enough to be buried, sent just over six thousand years ago in reply to another one that said simply, “How does it look?”  
The message says: “Interesting landscape. Wildlife’s a bit feisty. Probably going to put up a fight, but shouldn’t be anything to worry about. We can get started before the end of the century.”  
This was Rose Quartz’s first impression.  
Love takes time, and love takes work.

***

“Hey Steven. Wake up. The team needs you.”  
Steven blinks, trying to get his eyes to stay open, and murmurs “Okay—what is it—a mission or—”  
“We need you to help us finish this crossword puzzle,” Garnet says, leaning over him. “We just stumbled across it and started filling it in for a laugh and now we’re really invested.”  
He’s barely processed this when Pearl’s arm shoves a folded-up newspaper in his face. “What’s a ‘1970s TV lawyer’, six letters, starts with M?” He turns over just slightly only to see that she’s squeezed her narrow body onto the sliver of exposed bed next to him, legs crossed and leaning on her elbow all casually, in order to really get him up close and personal with what she’s showing him. She laughs as he gently shoves her out of the way and sits up. “It’s eight a.m. on a Saturday, guys…this is one urgent crossword puzzle.”  
“They’ve been at it all night,” Amethyst says, leaning on the TV with an exasperated look.  
“Don’t try to distance yourself from this,” Garnet says, looking over her shoulder. “You’re the one who fist-pumped so hard you broke a light bulb when your answer for twenty-three across fit.”  
“Can…can I get dressed?”  
“Of course you can,” Pearl answers him, “but hurry. There’s no way we’re going to get the rest of these pop-culture clues without you. What in the world are… ‘cowboy flicks’?”  
“I stand by my first thought for that one,” Amethyst puts in. “‘Nunchuks’ is the right number of letters, and you could flick a cowboy or…really anybody with those things.”  
“It has an ‘r’ in it. ‘Carbon’ is not wrong, the clue was ‘sixth element.’”  
“Westerns,” Steven half-yawns.  
“What?” They both turn and look at him.  
“That’s the answer for ‘cowboy flicks’, people call movies ‘flicks’. And cowboy movies are westerns.”  
“Why didn’t they just say movies? It doesn’t change the clue!” Pearl exclaims, not to Steven but vaguely skyward. “Why, puzzle-writing humans? Why must you complicate everything?”  
“I don’t know for sure,” he says gently, “but I think more people reading the newspaper know what ‘flicks’ means than know carbon is the sixth element right off the top of their heads.”  
“You’re telling me humans don’t know about carbon? They’re made of carbon.”  
“I think they know it more personally than technically. Now can you all please leave? I really would like to be dressed for this. I mean, if we’re gonna have deep conversations about carbon and everything.”  
The gems give some hasty apologies and split. Steven can hear them arguing over clues and numbers of letters all the way down the stairs. He reflects on how many partially-finished newspaper crossword puzzles he’s seen in his life and wonders if they’re even made with the intent that someone will complete them. But he knows they’re going to be on this like moss on a tree until something more important catches their attention, so for their sake he hopes it has an end in sight.  
It’s a few minutes later, once everyone has reconvened in the kitchen and is deep in crossword-puzzle related discussion, that something bizarre and unprecedented happens: Garnet knocks over a cup of coffee.  
She doesn’t react to any extreme—just a soft “oh” and a raised arm avoiding the spill—and for a second, nobody knows why the moment feels so unsettling. But then they do—Amethyst first; she stands up and leans forward in alarm. Pearl and Steven realize in near-unison, about a second later. It’s unsettling because Garnet goes through life free of small accidents like this. She sees them coming. She prevents them before they happen. “What’s wrong?”  
“Nothing, nothing,” she replies, sounding surprised (she never sounds surprised). “Just…put some pieces together all of a sudden.”  
“You mean for the crossword puzzle?” Steven pushes the newspaper tentatively towards her.  
“No,” she responds placidly, staring straight ahead and looking completely lost in thought, which is impressive considering that Pearl is bent directly over and in front of her, frantically dabbing at the dripping table with a wad of paper towels.  
Just when it looks like things are going to return to situation normal, Garnet speaks up again, her voice soft and distant. “You remember Moonstone?” she says to, apparently, the space just above Pearl’s lowered head. “Quartermaster from the Optique system who worked for Rose those couple centuries?”  
“Of course,” Pearl replies, straightening and looking stunned. It’s not that she and Garnet don’t speak of the dead at all. But they don’t do it here, in the kitchen, with Amethyst and Steven around. She takes a seat. “She went missing from homeworld custody right before a prisoner exchange…we all thought she was gone. You thought she was gone.”  
“I said it was most likely that she was gone. But apparently some random fluke future happened instead.”  
“Yeah?” Amethyst jumps up onto the table beside her. “So fill us in! What’s going down?”  
“She escaped from one of their ships a little while after she was captured. They didn’t record her missing until they knew someone on our side would notice she was gone. She stowed away on the first transport she could get on, and she’s been wandering around space since then, keeping a low profile. I saw this then, as a possibility with a slim chance of happening. I know it has happened because of what I can see now.”  
Steven looks over at his other two teammates, who are now raptly listening. Every so often Pearl absent-mindedly reaches over and hands one of the crumpled paper towels to Amethyst, who silently sucks all the coffee from its folds and then swallows it.  
Garnet smiles and stretches her crossed legs, relaxing again. “She’s on her way back to earth…well, sort of. She’s not just Moonstone anymore.”  
“What does that mean?”  
Garnet’s smile grows, and Steven smiles back at her: “Wait…”  
“Apparently, she got to know someone special on that shuttle,” she says. “And they’ve been Labradorite ever since.”  
Steven leans forward excitedly. “So she’s a fusion made from love? Like you?”  
“Seems that way. She wants to talk to me about something important. Her ship will land later today, on an island in the Pacific. The nearest warp’s a few miles away. I need to leave now if I want to meet her as soon as she gets here.”  
“I’ll come with you!” Pearl says immediately, jumping to her feet, but Garnet holds out a hand.  
“I need to go alone. It’s me she wants to talk to, and it’s better if I make sure she’s ready to share whatever it is with others before I bring anyone else into it.”  
“Oh…alright.” She folds her hands tightly against her chest and looks down at the floor. “I understand. I just…would love to talk to someone else who remembers the war. It’s just been you and me for so long.”  
Garnet smiles again and gives her the lightest tap on the arm. “Who knows, maybe I can bring her around later.”  
She turns and strides to warp pad. As she’s stepping up to it, Steven calls out, “Wait, really quick, what do you think this is—41 across, ‘ball “blank”, as on furniture,’ b-e and then five spaces.”  
“Geez, I don’t know,” she says, shrugging in frustration. “‘Beading’?”  
“I’ll try that. See you soon!”  
She warps out with a smile and a wave, just in time for Pearl to seize the newspaper. “Let me see that. It’s ‘bearing.’ Ball bearing? Right?”  
“I have no idea,” Steven responds. “This is wearing out my brain. I’m gonna go look at car listings some more. Good luck, guys.”  
“It has to be that. I mean…‘beaning’ doesn’t make sense,” he hears Pearl muttering behind him.  
“You’re overthinking it. ‘Bearing’ was right,” Amethyst replies.  
“I’m not really sure about any of these to be honest.”  
“At this point, I’m ready to just start writing random letters in boxes. It needs some more Q’s, don’t you think?”  
“Amethyst, no!”

***

Garnet stands in the hum of the island woods, hands on her hips, looking up at a small, battered spaceship balanced on thin landing gear.

It feels like I’ve been waiting here a long time. Maybe it hasn’t been that long. So what’s she doing in there? Practicing a speech? Ah, don’t be so impatient. She’s never been on earth before. Well, part of her hasn’t at least.  
She’s lost enough in thought that she’s almost startled when the entrance she expected—a door swung open and a chipper “hello!” with the emphasis on the second syllable—cuts through the calm.  
The gem standing in the hatch is at least a head taller than her, with an exuberant puff of hair gathered up on top of her head and four leanly-muscled arms. A gem glows on each of her cheeks—one blue and gold, the other blue and white.  
“So,” she says. “You must be Labradorite.”  
“And you must be Garnet,” comes the reply, “and this must be the place, huh? Moon’s told me so much about it—well, figuratively speaking, of course. The Planet That Would Not Die.”  
“I like to think of it more as the Planet That Would Not Surrender,” Garnet says, holding out a hand to boost her down from the ship. “Gives everyone involved a little more credit.”  
“I thought it would be more impressive looking…no offense.”  
“It grows on you. Growing is sort of what it does best.”  
Labradorite smiles. One pair of her arms clasps hands together earnestly, the other pair folds tight. The effect is a strangely natural combination of enthusiasm and guardedness. “Well, anyways, I didn’t come just to see earth. I also came to see you. I’m looking for…well, I guess I’m not certain. All I know is this—Rose Quartz rallied an army practically overnight five thousand years ago, and I’m afraid I’m going to need to do the same thing.”  
Garnet’s eyebrows raise behind her visor. “Elaborate.”  
Her arms (all of them) drop to her sides, and she lifts her head upward, looking towards a non-specific point on the horizon. “The borders of the empire have been unstable since your rebellion. The authorities are weaker now. Gems who wouldn’t have dared to show their faces in the old days are starting to find each other.”  
Now Garnet responds with a wary smile. “You mean like you found me?”  
“I already knew where to find you,” she says, one hand brushing lightly against her own chest. “You’re a legend.”  
She lets out a soft chuckle.  
“Really!” Labradorite says, bending her knees to get close to her and pressing her top set of hands together again in excitement. “Listen, in the outer Perseus Arm systems we have—fusions, I mean, we have a sort of…community. Secret from the other gems. We’ve created places where we can be ourselves together. And you’re…an inspiration. We talk all the time about how your victories during the rebellion showed everyone that inter-type fusion could be a successful—”  
“Now listen,” she cuts her off. “I am not a soldier anymore. And I don’t stay like this to be a stronger warrior, or to teach anyone a lesson. I’ve got my own reasons. I really hope you haven’t sold them on any other story.”  
She blinks. “Of course not. But you know gems.”  
Garnet clenches her teeth for a split second before replying with a neutral “yes.”  
“I guess that’s sort of why I wanted to talk to you. You’ve had all this time out here, away from society, and I think that—with how talked-about you are, and your perspective, you could—introduce some direction—”  
“You need a leader,” she says. “You can get to the point with me. I already know what it’s going to be.”  
Labradorite laughs a little. “Right. I forgot.” She leans against the side of the ship, and Garnet sees a little hint of Moonstone in the way she tilts her head and folds her arms—but she stops that train of thought. She wonders if that was how people who knew Sapphire and Ruby used to see her, way back before everything. She knows there’s some truth to it—not-two-not-one, the pair still existing in their perfect synergy—but it isn’t the way she thinks about herself, so she won’t think about Labradorite that way either.  
And it’s at that moment of reproach that she fully realizes that she’s looking at another fulltime fusion, another love fusion, another two-type fusion—and she’s saying that there are more. Even if you’re never alone, that recognition—for the first time ever—has got to mean something. Garnet abruptly smiles. “Hey,” she says. “I didn’t get to say that—I’m really happy for you. For…you know. Existing. I hope life on the road hasn’t been too rough on you.”  
Labradorite hoists herself up from the ground to the ledge around the ship’s center dome, grinning and crossing her legs with a flourish. “You know something? I’m happy for me too. It’s been nothing I can’t handle.” This said, she leans forward, suddenly serious. “I’ve been keeping on the move, and that keeps me out of the way. Others don’t have it as good. It’s still dangerous for most of them. That’s why they need us. We experienced the rebellion. We came into our own under Rose Quartz’s ideals. We're in an ideal position to help.”  
Garnet watches her clenching hands and brimming smile. She knows this feeling. Labradorite has a cause, and a passion, and a bond within her that’s stronger than any darkness. She can take the news she’s about to get, but it’s still a damper: “Do they know, out on the frontier, that Rose is gone now?”  
The fusion’s jaunty motion halts. “What?” Her hands grab onto the ship’s edge. “What do you mean gone?”  
“Do you know that Yellow Diamond’s forces have been defeated here once since the rebellion?”  
“When?”  
“Five years ago. It was a big deal.”  
“Garnet,” she says, “I think you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”  
Despite the now-grave expression on Labradorite’s face, Garnet smiles again, a softer smile. “Pearl’s still the gem who explains things around here. She was really hoping to see you while you’re in the neighborhood.”  
“You mean—our Pearl? Rose’s Pearl? One-seven-seven-one-ought-one?”  
“You sound surprised.”  
Labradorite jumps to the ground again. “Nah, I’d love to see her again! I just thought…if Rose isn’t here, then…”  
“Rose…is here, in a way, but not the way you’d expect. And I think probably the best way to show you is for you to come and meet—um—the current Crystal Gems.” She turns slightly, gesturing to the space beside her. “Walk with me.”

***  
At the same moment, five light years away in a system humans call Barnard’s Star, nine gems sit shoulder to shoulder against the chill of space. “If it hits the broadcast accelerators in the intermediary void like we meant it to, the signal should reach earth in a little over a week.”  
“And then what?”  
“And then we wait, I guess. I can’t imagine it’ll be more than a little over half a century. We’ll miss the start of things, but at least we can help with what comes after.”  
“You really think she’d leave earth for that long?”  
“I don’t know. She has no obligation to us. But she did kind of…start it.”  
In the intervening years since meeting the Crystal Gems, the first rogue pearls, the collective calling themselves Team Spear It (a name bestowed by Rose Quartz’s son himself), have traveled the galaxy in the spaceship they were abandoned with before Rose’s rebellion, teaching weapons proficiency and the radical ways of the guardians of earth to their sisters in secret. Already pearls and servant gems on some of the empire’s colonies and space stations have staged successful mutinies, winning greater freedom than they ever would have thought possible before.  
Shade, their de facto leader, knows it could never have been done without Pearl—known to the last chapter of history Rose Quartz’s Pearl, known to the next chapter, they hope, she hopes, they all hope, as the original Pearl Who Owns Herself—who showed them what a gem not made to fight could do with a spear and a sword and a will a hundred times stronger than her body or her gem. And as much as they owe her, they need her again.  
“What are we gonna do if some other ship comes along first? Still wait?”  
Shade looks down the row. “What else would we do? Board them?”  
“Why not!” Blue says. “What’ve we got to lose?”  
A wry chorus responds: “Dignity!”  
“This cup!”  
“This pie plate!”  
“All the good times we had along the way!”  
Shade grins nervously at first but then allows herself to scowl. Nobody mentions a self or a life or a friend. They’re so new to thinking of those things as their own that they don’t even cross their minds.  
“Not again with the gallows humor—not today,” she says, just loud enough for them to hear. “Any other time, but not today. We’re on the eve of revolution, gems.”  
The group goes suddenly solemn. “What do you think will happen on homeworld, if they try to go through with it without us?”  
“I don’t know. With these kinds of numbers there’s still a chance they could succeed, but it’ll be chaos. Heavy damage, high casualty count. Riskier than we wanted it, for sure. They won’t adapt if anything goes wrong.”  
Bolt puts her hand on Shade’s shoulder. “Have a little faith. We adapted.”  
“Did we?”  
“You know it, pearl,” Dimples says from beside them, poking Shade’s knee with her foot. “Look at me. I’m adapting right now.”  
“Nothing says ‘adapting’ like nine junk units in a heap on a shot-out bridge of an obsolete ship,” Roco says from the opposite arc of their circle, her signature sardonic cackle running under her words.  
“We’re all here,” Deadeye puts in evenly, “and we’re all still gonna be here tomorrow. That’s a victory. We’re doing fine.”  
Shade’s still-careful smile now goes uninterrupted. “You’re right,” she says, as she settles back against the wall and Bolt leans her head into the angle of her shoulder, cozying up casually like she’s been doing it all her life. “We’re doing fine.”


	2. Triumph

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garnet and Labradorite talk things over; Steven buys his first car with help from Pearl and Amethyst; the time for revolution continues to draw nigh; etc. This one is long and mostly expository, but I've spent a very long time trying to make it fun anyway, so hope you guys enjoy <3

  
***  
A pair of fusions sit together by the sea—waiting for the rest of the team to come home—and compare notes.  
“It’s easier than being apart, now. They just sync naturally. It happened fast, too. First few centuries.”  
Garnet nods—and smiles. “Sounds like it was meant to be.”  
“I suppose so,” Labradorite sighs, returning the smile, but shrugging a little too. She eyes the cup of coffee that Garnet made her as a taste of the local hospitality, trying to wrap her head around what exactly she’s supposed to do with it.  
Garnet sips at her own. “You probably have a harder time of it than I do, out there. The team don’t always get it, but they’re okay with me, and for the most part I don’t _need_ them to get it. _I_ get it.”  
“And that’s enough?”  
Now it’s Garnet’s turn to shrug. “Like I said. For the most part.” She looks to the gem(s) beside her. “Big Blue’s still not over it, um—back our way, huh?”  
Labradorite guffaws outright, though bitterly. “That’s one way of putting it.” She pulls her legs up from the edge of the porch, into the shadow of the temple. “Getting away from the courts has made a difference, and so has having others around. Gems who _do_ …get it, as you said.”  
She nods. They’re quiet together for a moment. Then Garnet turns where she’s sitting, grinning, moving with a spontaneous energy that rarely manages to break through the weight of the future that clings to her, always, like a robe.  
“So how long have you been together? Three or four thousand years?”  
“Not quite that. Just over twenty-five hundred.”  
“Wow, look at you. You’re all cohesive.”  
She nods, laughter simmering again. “Well—we—I?—they?”  
Garnets hand rises from her knee just slightly in a gesture of deep recognition. “Pronouns. What a…something, right?”  
“What do you do about it?”  
“Are you talking about before you formed or after?”  
She thinks. “Before. What I was saying is, Sun and Moonstone had a lot of time to get to know each other on that transport. Before and during, I guess that is.”  
“I say ‘I’ when I’m here and ‘they’ when I’m not. I always have think about it, though.”  
“I like that system. It’s straightforward. Suits you.”  
“Sure it’s not the only way.”  
“I still want ‘we’ in there someplace, I think. I’m sort of always around in the space in between them, you know?”  
“That’s true.” A soft smile continues to subtly wax and wane on Garnet’s face as she considers it. “It’s just that, for me…things started over, when I came to be. I was a couple of awfully lost gems. And then I was something that had never been imagined before. I just broke my own pronoun rule.”  
“Doesn’t count. You were being philosophical,” Labradorite replies with a wave of half her hands. They both have a laugh at that one. Then she sombers. “I know what you’re talking about, though. Things starting over. The life—the lives you had before—they sort of end by necessity. There’s no going back when you find out that…that what you were isn’t what you are. Sunny drove that transport for thirty thousand years. And all of it’s just over now, and I don’t care at _all.”_  
“Do you feel like you should?”  
“I don’t know.”  
Garnet sits in silence, her shadow long and angular in the afternoon sun, for a long while. “Ruby was a soldier,” she finally says.  
“I know.”  
“I mean, she was…a ruby. She was made to accept that her life as she knew it could end, any day and in any way. Except the way it did.”  
“Pardon my saying so, but the Ruby I knew all that time ago couldn’t accept the pale hiss of the universe if it was even slightly inconvenient to her.”  
She smiles again. “Things don’t always go according to plan.”  
“So where is this going?” She’s more at ease than anyone else has ever been asking Garnet things like that—what are you thinking, what’s the consensus. Or maybe it’s just that she knows what questions to ask. She, too, contains a running conversation.  
“I’m wording. Sorry.”  
Labradorite holds her hands up obligingly.  
“When you fuse, you go away,” she says. “That’s a fact of existence, for a gem like Ruby. But there’s a difference between just going away, and going away to something.”  
“Wow. Yes.” She sniffs the coffee, seems to consider it a moment, and looks at her again. “That’s the kind of…wording we need, you know.”  
“It took me half a minute to do it.”  
“You’re a free gem. You’ve got time.” She says it a little wistfully, and Garnet turns her head to look at her over her hunched shoulder.  
“And you don’t?”  
“Can’t count on it.”  
“What if you just stayed here? Aside from those couple disturbances, the powers that be have mostly left me alone.”  
She shakes her head. “My friends need me. We look out for each other. It wouldn’t be right for me to just go into hiding.”  
Garnet lets her hand move closer to her companion’s. She says the most comforting thing she can think of. The thing that would comfort her, she hopes. Not that she can really imagine comfort anywhere in the hypothetical of living with the clear and present threat of being split up, the hovering knowledge that she could be separated from herself at any time. “You’re always there. You said it yourself. Anywhere their love exists.”  
Labradorite pulls her folded legs in further, wrapping them in one set of arms. The other two trace the lip of the still-untouched mug of coffee beside her. “Well, that’s the real trick, isn’t it? It’s not the being there you want. It’s the going away.” Garnet bristles a bit, and she amends, “Not just going away. Going away to something. For something. Or someone.” She lifts the mug again, seemingly only to create suspense over whether she’s going to actually drink anything. “It’s about the freedom to become what you want to be. Being split up is like—” She raises her top pair of arms high over her head, extending her form slightly to accentuate the movement. “—Like wanting to stretch and not being able to.”  
“It’s just another transformation at the end of the day.”  
“Natural as shapeshifting.”  
“Good as any body you could form.” None of these statements are really news to either of them, but it feels grand to say them out loud. On Homeworld there were mottoes, directions, litanies; things to speak to keep yourself, and each other, in line. And though they’ve left the ideas behind, the sounds of their voices in call-and-response, the togetherness, are a relief. On top of what they’re putting into words, they both feel something they can’t quite say—that their inherently radical beings are an extension of something that’s always been, that _should_ be. They belong together, and _they_ also belong together, and in so many ways, ways as many as there are of them, gems—maybe beings in general—are made for each other.  
“There’s a difference between losing yourself and giving yourself. If the rebellion taught us anything…” She trails off, staring off at the vision of the planet she half-remembers.  
Garnet gestures out, and raises her mug to the descending sun. “To the good obliteration,” she says.  
“What’s that?”  
“I d’know. It’s a thing I saw a human do once.”  
Labradorite imitates her, looking bemused but sensing the appropriateness of the gesture. “To rebellion.”  
“To romance.”  
“To Rose ‘Love-Who-You-Will-And-Take-Nothin’-Less’ Quartz.”  
“And to Earth.”  
“And to us.”  
Garnet drains her mug. Labradorite sips hers. The two silhouettes—tall, proud, extra bits and all—stand a moment in quiet reverence of all that they once fought for.  
There is a sound of coffee pouring into the sand.  
“Can’t do it?”  
“Sorry. It’s really nasty.”  
“It’s an acquired taste.”  
***  
“Where is he?” Pearl says, pacing back and forth across the tiles of the sky arena. “We agreed to all be here fifteen minutes ago.”  
“Well, you know Steven,” Connie replies, “he’s either doing something important that’ll help somebody, or he stopped to get fries and got distracted by a seagull.”  
Pearl smiles at this in spite of her annoyance. Deep down, she doesn’t begrudge him his lack of focus at all–it comes from a love of this planet and its life that she knows she can never fully understand. His mother was the same way. The crucial difference being that Rose was an expert warrior with centuries of experience; Steven on the other hand still has a lot to gain from making it to a training session on time. “We’re running out of daylight,” she says, snapping back to the task at hand. “Want me to just demonstrate through this once while we wait?”  
“Sure.”  
“It tends to look awfully brutal, but in the case of certain corrupted gems and other gem-made creatures, it may be your only chance at breaking the projection.”  
These lessons have become a bit more relaxed since Steven and Connie have already proved their mettle once against an invading homeworld force. They work hard, but the tension, the urgency, has lifted a bit. Pointedly, they go to the sky arena only when necessary–Pearl has never admitted that being there sets her on edge, that it pulls up old and vulnerable states of mind; but there is a difference when they just spar on the beach or on the hill next to the temple. In those places, she’s less of a soldier. More of a teacher. She enjoys their successes instead of checking them off a mental list. She shows off for them and grins when they laugh together. Once in a blue moon, she’ll even crack a subtle joke.  
Today is an arena day, but a better one than most. She stays close to the moment, mouthing along with the lengthier-than-usual programmed speech from her hologram opponent that accompanies this advanced and highly specific technique. Her eyes dart to the side only for an instant when Connie’s phone buzzes and she says, “Oh, this is Steven.”  
“Toss it here,” she says, eyes still locked on the hologram, hand held out about a foot from Connie’s face.  
“You sure?”  
“Definitely. Let me talk to him.” She catches the phone and answers it just as she moves to block the first strike. “Steven? Yes, hello, it’s me. Where are you?”  
“I’m at this guy’s house right outside town–”  
“And what are you doing there? Connie’s waiting for you!”  
“I know, I know, and I’m really sorry, it’s just that he’s selling this car that I think might be the one I’m gonna get, and he called me an hour ago and said he had other people asking about it that he was gonna have to give it to if I didn’t come before tonight so I got Jenny to give me a ride and now I’m kind of stranded here unless I buy the car. So I need your advice on whether I should buy it or not. And if I don’t I need you to try and get ahold of my dad at the car wash so he can come pick me up when he gets off work.”  
“Steven…” Pearl sighs, parrying furiously with the hand not holding the phone, “you really should’ve thought this through a little better before you went all that way.”  
“I know, I just sort of panicked. And I’ve got all my summer job money together and…it’s a really good car! It’s a 1980 Spitfire–”  
“Are you kidding?”  
“No…what…why? What’s the matter with it?”  
She takes a step forward, raising her sword and holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder as she balances her stance with her now-free arm. “Steven, it’s a death trap!”  
“But…you say that about every human form of transportation.”  
“Have you seen traffic accident statistics lately? I say it because it’s true. Especially in the case of this particular vehicle.”  
“It’s–actually, how would you know?”  
“Vidalia had one back around the time we all first met your dad. It was the first poorly-designed earth machine that depended on me for survival, back in the day when the van still at least made a convincing pretense of reliability.”  
“Well, can you come look at this one or something and see if it’s okay? He’s asking ten thousand dollars for it but I think I can talk him down. Or I hope I can. I don’t actually have that much.”  
Rolling her eyes dramatically she advances on her opponent. “I’ll come in forty-five minutes, alright? I have some work to do here with my other student who isn’t stranded in some random person’s backyard planning to spend a fortune on a car that won’t run.”  
“It runs! He started it for me!”  
“Give it time. Trust me.”  
“You’ll come take a look at it though?”  
“Yes. I’ll see you soon.”  
“Okay. Right. See you soon.”  
Pearl hangs up. “Trade you,” she says, gesturing at a second sword leaning against the bench where Connie is sitting, and she takes the phone back and tosses the sword to her. “I don’t believe this,” Pearl continues under her breath, crossing the blades to corner the hologram. “Why can’t he just get a sensible car?” She swiftly pulls her arms back, closing the scissored swords over its neck. It disintegrates with a flicker.  
“Is Steven in trouble?” Connie asks. “Do I need to go or something and stay out of it?”  
“No, no,” she replies. “I’m just a little bit frustrated. Every conversation sounds more serious and threatening when you have it while performing a combat decapitation.”  
***  
“So he wants to get the same car Vidalia used to have?” Amethyst is speeding up to catch Pearl’s longer strides, eyes gleaming with, Pearl assumes, anticipated possibilities for conflict and aggravation.  
“The same type of car. Although maybe it is the exact same car. That would be my luck.”  
“It’s back to haunt you. It can’t let go. Nobody can ever love it like you did.”  
“Love’s a strong word for it I think. Most of the time it really got on my nerves. But I had time on my hands, and it seemed like a shame to just let it sit useless when there was something I could easily do about it.”  
They knock on the screen door and a man, presumably the owner of the house and seller of the car, lets them in. “You’re Steven’s parents?”  
“Well, we’re not actually–”  
“Pearl, we decided, remember? We just say we are, it’s less complicated.”  
“Alright, fine, yes, we’re his parents. And you are?”  
“I’m Dave. From Craigslist? Steven said he showed you the listing.” Pearl vaguely remembers Steven saying something about the Craig’s List thing, and even vaguely remembers asking him to explain it, but the explanation hadn’t made any sense to her either.  
“Oh good, you’re here!” Steven’s voice says from a room away, and a moment later he appears and grabs her by the arm. “Come look! You’ll be so excited. It’s a really powerful engine, that’s what’s different about the 1980s models. It’s sort of old but I think we can fix it up, right?”  
She gives him a pained smile. “We’ll see.”  
In the wire-fenced backyard, Steven pops the Triumph’s hood and gestures grandly at the exposed machinery. “Isn’t it nice?”  
“You have no idea what you’re looking at, do you.”  
“…No. But I know it’s supposed to be impressive.”  
“It is impressive, but not for the reasons you’re thinking,” she responds, with a sardonic laugh under her words. “Why does it have to be this one, Steven? Why not something nice and practical–”  
“This one is cool,” Amethyst and Steven say, almost in unison.  
“It isn’t going to make it home!”  
“Maybe not without some help from a really smart gem who knows how to fix it,” Steven says, shamelessly puppy-dog-eyeing in her direction.  
“C’mon, Pearl, it needs you!” Amethyst adds.  
“You two are determined to get me to form an emotional attachment to this machine. Well, it isn’t going to work.”  
“So what, you’re just gonna give up on it?”  
Pearl leans on the edge of the hood, head against her hand in exasperation. “It’s not a mission objective, Steven, it’s a car. It’s an expensive, non-working car.”  
At this point, Dave from Craigslist reappears. “So what do you think? Beauty, isn’t it?”  
Amethyst visibly settles back, smiling. As per suspicions, this is what she came to watch.  
Pearl straightens up, takes a step toward him, then takes half a step back, then looks at both their feet, then looks at his face. For all this calculation, she’s still a little closer to him than socially expected when she says, “How’s the crankshaft look?”  
“Excuse me?”  
“The crankshaft. This is what you call a 1980 Spitfire, correct?”  
“Yes…?”  
“Unless it’s been replaced or it was a custom model, this will have a 1500 engine and an aluminum crankshaft. And as you really should know, if you’re going to be selling secondhand cars, a shaft made of such a light material is extremely prone to bending and breaking off when attached to a powerful motor. It can cause the whole engine to fail in much less time than the forty years this thing’s presumably been on the road.”  
“I guess I haven’t looked at it.”  
“Well then, I’m going to look at it for you. Do you have a crescent wrench I can borrow? No, never mind, I’ll just use my own.” She then proceeds to stand there with a look of deep concentration for several seconds, the glow of her gem fluctuating wildly, until she abruptly looks up and says “Amethyst, did you hide my wrench somewhere again?”  
Without hesitation or ceremony Amethyst pulls the wrench in question out of her gem. “I didn’t hide it, you left it in my room.”  
“How did you ever even see it in there?”  
“I know where everything is in there and I know when something’s missing and I know when something’s new. I don’t know why you think I don’t.”  
“That’s a discussion we need to have later. Right now I’ve got a gearbox to investigate. Steven, let me see your phone.”  
He hands to her. She looks at it. “Um…make it do the thing where you can take pictures?” He takes the phone back, turns the camera on, and returns it to her hand.  
She turns back to the open front of the car, the beam from her gem shining into its depths like a flashlight. Her slender arms disappear almost entirely into the engine block, the wrench in one hand and the phone in the other. “What are you doing?” he protests. “If your kid’s not gonna buy this thing I’ve still gotta sell it to somebody–”  
“Unless you’re planning to either fight this phone away from me or actively commit fraud, you’re not selling this car to anybody,” she replies, holding up the picture which is the result of her efforts. “Does that look adequately maintained to you?”  
“Well, I guess it’s–”  
“Hold on,” she says, turning away again and directing the beam from her head with one hand. “Beyond that, it looks to me like the head gasket’s nearly rusted out, the brake pads are dangerously eroded, and most of these hoses could stand to be replaced. Were you not aware of any of that?”  
Amethyst starts laughing under her breath. There’s fear in Dave From Craigslist’s eyes.  
Pearl, on the other hand, is looking at Steven. He stares wistfully down at the little convertible, tracing its obnoxious racing stripes with his fingertips. “We’ll give you twenty-five hundred for it,” she informs them all, apologizing profusely to her own better judgment.  
“Twenty-five hundred–are you nuts?! It’s a classic model–”  
“The first thousand is to appease your incomprehensible human sentimentality for obsolete technology. Fifteen hundred is what they’d probably give you for the scrap metal.”  
“Fine, fine, just don’t write me any bad reviews. I’ll get the keys.“  
Steven is glowing with his signature poor-planning-fueled excitement. He reaches out to hug Pearl to his side, making her look slight and wispy in the context of his arms (she’s still a little bewildered by the size reversal that has happened here. As it turns out, no amount of prior technical knowledge about human phenomena like ‘adolescence’ and 'growth spurts’ can truly prepare one for the experience of being positively dwarfed by a child one used to personally pick up and rock to sleep). "Oh man, thanks for that! I owe you big time,” he says.  
She meets his ear-to-ear grin with a heavy-lidded skeptical glance. “You earned the money, you should get the car you want,” she says. “When it conks out five miles from home, I’m steering, you’re pushing. Amethyst is helping you push.”  
Amethyst lifts her head up from where she’s been leaning it on the car’s windshield. “Why am I being held responsible for this?”  
“You encourage him. We all encourage him because we’re all suckers, but you’re the worst.”  
“I’m not the one enabling reckless teen driving so I can have a new toy to take apart.”  
Pearl bristles upward like a cloth rubbed the wrong way. “If you’re suggesting that I—why you don’t even—”  
Amethyst smiles beatifically. “Sound like doth protesting too much to methinks or whatever.”  
Steven walks off, accepts the keys, hands over a check. “Thanks,” he says. “Sorry for all the trouble. Other than trying to scam me, you seem like a really nice guy.”  
Dave gives him a sneer, thinking he’s being sarcastic (he isn’t). He looks over toward Amethyst and Pearl, who are now talking frantically over one another and gesturing wildly on the other side of the yard, as he takes the check from Steven’s hand. “Are they okay?”  
“Yeah, they do that. Never lasts long,” he replies, and reaches out to give him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Stay classy, Dave from Craigslist.”  
The car breaks down within sight of the temple. Despite Pearl’s very specific plan for this exact situation, in practice they just leave it halfway up the hill with the parking brake and the hazards on. Garnet spots them from the porch and drags it down to the beach with one hand, shooing them up the stairs with the cryptic admonition “We’ve got company.”  
“Oh! She came back with you!”  
“Yeah.”  
Pearl turns and starts for the stairs. “I worked with Moonstone a lot during the war, taking care of all the administrative stuff,” she explains to Steven and Amethyst behind her. “I’ve missed her, she was always so…organized!”  
The door swings open on Connie and a tall, straight-backed figure. “Did you get the car?” Connie asks, as if there is no more pressing matter.  
“Yeah! It’s great, you should see it—”  
Pearl takes his arm before he can turn. “Steven,” she whispers, “aren’t you going to say hello to our guest?”  
“Yeah, yeah, for sure, uh, hello.”  
The gem at the table eyes him. “Hello?” Then she leans sideways to look around him. “Pearl?”  
“Good to see you a—or, well, good to meet you I guess. I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.”  
She smiles and holds a hand out, which Pearl somewhat bewilderedly takes. “Name’s Labradorite. I believe we have a mutual acquaintance.”  
Pearl releases an awkward laugh. “Bit more than acquaintance, in your case, from what I understand.”  
She laughs in return. “How’ve you been, renegade?”  
At this, Pearl finally relaxes, smiles a more-than-polite smile. Warmth fills the space between them. Her answer to the question is a genuinely-happy-sounding, “Oh, well, I’ve certainly been managing! What about you?”  
“Hey,” she says, and gestures at her general being. “As long as I’m together, what have I got to complain about?”  
Pearl smiles again, crookedly, and near-interrupts, “Have you heard all about Steven?”  
“No…who is that? And who are you?”  
This last is addressed to Amethyst, who steps forward with her own interruption. “Hold up on all the introducing for a second. What’re you still doing here, Connie? You made such a big deal about getting home by dark.”  
She spreads her hand over the air; a dramatic I-got-this gesture. “My parents have gotten more flexible when it’s galactic-security sort of stuff. I made some calls. Besides, Steven’s my ride home. Well, Lion’s my ride home, but he won’t do that kind of thing for anybody except Steven.”  
Amethyst turns and looks at Steven with an eyebrow raised. “You know, I never even considered that you don’t necessarily need the car to get places when we were going to all that trouble.”  
“Okay, the car has its own advantages.”  
She snickers. “Like…reliability?”  
“Can I take Lion through a drive-thru? No. I actually can’t take him a lot of places. Either people don’t want him there or he doesn’t want to be there.” Right on cue, Lion gets up from Connie’s feet and wanders off to somewhere else in the temple, as if suddenly deciding that he doesn’t want to be here either. “Love you, buddy!” Steven calls after him.  
Labradorite stands up and gestures desperately at all of them. “Can we…find somewhere to start explaining things? I don’t know who half of you are—I’ve just been waiting here since Garnet told me to and this human’s been telling me about some of your poets on this planet—which has been fascinating, dear—”  
“Oh, hey, anytime,” Connie replies, “I’m just trying to get my 19th Century Lit reading out of the way.”  
“—but I’m getting the sense that I’ve missed a lot. I’m caught up in some political aims, at the moment, and it’d serve me to know exactly where to find my former commanding officer.”  
Steven puts his hands together, a pose that indicates the intent to swan dive into what’s sure to be a nuanced conversation. “And, your former commanding officer, I’d assume, would be—”  
“Rose Quartz. The leader of the Crystal Gems of earth.”  
“Right. Um.” He looks at Pearl for help, only to find she’s looking at him for help. Amethyst is furiously scrubbing at a years-old scuff mark on the floor with the toe of her shoe. “Rose Quartz fell in love with my dad and gave up her physical form to create me and I’m half gem and half human and I have her powers but she isn’t really here. Anymore. Physically. Strictly speaking.” Steven’s explained this to a lot of people in his life, but never to a member of his mother’s army.  
Labradorite sits back down. She stares straight ahead for a moment. Then she looks back to Pearl. “Did you and Garnet…agree to that?”  
“We were consulted,” Pearl replies, folding her arms. “It was what Rose wanted. And, well, Steven is one of us. He’s carried her work on admirably. We’re very proud of him.”  
Steven slips her a grateful look, but the mood remains awkward. It’s at this moment that Garnet comes to the door. She takes one look at Labradorite sitting frozen in shock, Steven smiling nervously, Pearl with her hands flattened together and pressed to her mouth, and Amethyst and Connie hanging back unsurely, and infers. “You just told her, didn’t you.”  
Steven turns to her and speaks the slowest, most hesitant “Yeah” of his life. Labradorite meets Garnet’s gaze with nervous eyes.  
She comes up in front of her, then pulls up another chair with a subtle flourish. “Listen.” Both fusions lean forward. “The way I see it, Rose is only gone the way Moonstone is gone. The way Ruby and Sapphire are gone. She chose to give herself up lovingly to create something new. She loved earth and humanity so much that…well, she wanted to be part of it. The difference is just that, as far as we know, she can’t come back the way she was before. Does that make sense?”  
She seems to consider this very deeply. Her eyes are vivid and wild, swirling gold and silver. Slowly, she nods. Then she straightens, and looks Steven in the eye.  
“Well, Steven Quartz,” she says (making a dubious but factually correct assumption about his name), “Maybe you can help me too.”  
***  
“Alright—this is our situation—” Labradorite points two pairs of folded hands forward in perfect synchronization. “One of my outer-systems buddies did some sleuthing in the public records—she’s half spinel, you know, did archival work—and as it turns out, inter-type fusion isn’t even technically illegal. It’s more just that everyone pretends it’s unheard of, and there’s been a precedent set, since the war, of considering fusers rebels, in which case they could be crushed by executive order.”  
Garnet grimaces. “That’s been done?”  
“Not yet. They’ve been threatening to make an example of one of ours—she’s a prisoner—well, technically she’s three prisoners,” she replies, looking down, putting her hands between her knees. “After that business, fusions were a lot warier towards the idea of going public.”  
“I would be too,” Garnet says, the slightest suggestion of a skeptical grunt in her voice. Her hands cross over each other, a familiar gesture of tender strength. She doesn’t bring up questions of bravery or cowardice, doesn’t presume of the self-preservation instincts of individuals whose names she does not know. But her posture sends a message—remember the feeling of loyalty-induced braveries canceling each other out. Remember that for you and I, to protect yourself is to protect your beloved.  
In the way of those coming from a similar place, Labradorite reads her loud and clear. “The trouble is that there’s danger in keeping secrets too—without any kind of recognition as their own self-contained gems, a crime against a fusion is legally victimless. And with the fervor that’s been kicking up these days, a lot of gems are keen to take advantage of that. You see what I’m saying?”  
“Yes.” Everyone in the room is looking at her, waiting for a reaction she isn’t ready to give. She picks over the past with the same silence and distance she usually reserves for the future. More than any single event she remembers sensations: Rose’s firm yet gentle grip on her shoulder, and the feeling of the first time she ever summoned her weapon together. “So?” And her voice raises almost imperceptibly, like she’s taking a step back from a microphone. “What action?”  
Labradorite smiles, recognizing both the familiar approach of an old friend and the fabled ways of a legend. “My intent,” she says, “is to show the Diamond courts how many of us there really are, and to gain an audience with them by whatever means necessary.”  
“That sounds…” Garnet pauses for a ridiculously long time. So long that it starts to get weird and the others all lean forward, trying to prompt her but not daring to interject. They may not see what she sees, but they know her, and they must assume, to a degree, what she’s sorting through, the care with which she is selecting the next word. “…Drastic,” she finally finishes."Any compromises you make are going to be in their favor. And any force you use will confirm to them that you're dangerous."  
“So we take it slow. We're trying to secure something long term. We don’t want risky underground arrangements, and we don’t want war. I’m certainly not betting that they can be reasoned with, but maybe they can be persuaded.”  
There’s a moment of silence. “I’m not sure I like this,” Garnet says, and instantly the eyes of her family go to her, attuned to her unease by years of following its warnings like a lighthouse in the dark.  
Labradorite’s voice crests with annoyance—“I haven’t even told you—” but then deflates. “Oh.”  
There’s a moment of silence. “Are you gonna tell us what she was about to say or what?” Amethyst finally asks, perched at Garnet’s side on the coffee table.  
“Now just listen. If we can show them that inter-type fusion can have applications that they need—that it’s beneficial, that it’s—”  
“Useful?”  
The word hangs in the air for an inordinately long time. Garnet’s face is calm, but her hand on the corner of the table is tense to the point of agony. Amethyst’s eyes are glued to it as Labradorite, stammering, not sure what she’s said, attempts a reply.  
“Well—yes—whatever it takes to make it safe for us.”  
“And that’ll do it?”  
“It’s worth a shot.”  
“You’re giving them an inch,” she says. Her voice is getting softer and softer. “Are you prepared for them to take a mile?”  
“What does that mean?”  
She looks away from her. “Not everything has to be useful to be important. That’s the idea that saved this planet. It’s the idea that saved me.” In the quiet that follows this statement, Pearl stands up and goes to Garnet’s side, taking her hand solemnly. Amethyst, already next to her, straightens and looks up intently. Almost imperceptibly, Garnet glances at them, one and then the other. She’d spoken for herself, but her companions of the past millennia—both called defective, both lost in the shuffle of imperial efficiency before Rose and her convictions—have their own reasons to second the statement.  
In response to their united front, Labradorite stands. “I don’t like it any more than you do. If it were your dearest friends at stake,” she says, voice low and bitter, “what would you compromise?”  
Garnet folds her arms. “I know what I’m fighting. If you try to play by their rules, all you’re doing is moving the dangers into the future.”  
“Is the future all you think about?”  
She flinches. For all her conviction, it’s close to the mark. “Yes,” she nearly whispers. “With very good reason.”  
“Well,” Labradorite sniffs, doing a less-than-elegant job of hiding her disappointment—her folded pair of arms unfolds and drops heavily to her sides—“I guess that settles it then.”  
Garnet feels her metaphorical heart sink much harder than she expected it to, hearing her decision made so final in someone else’s words. She is conscious that Labra can’t see much of her face, that the feeling doesn’t register, and yet she is right back where she so often lands—frozen in place. She believes her, utterly and completely, about the suffering of those like her, the second family she hadn’t known she had until this morning. She remembers the eyes of the gems who saw her as a slight, a stain, a disgrace. She remembers fearing them.  
But it is because of them, and what they mistook her for, that she can’t back up an inch on this. She sees too far forward. And in this case, too big of a picture. “I guess so,” she hears herself say.  
Labradorite looks to the warp pad, turning toward it only with agonizing hesitation. "Well," she says, "I need to get back homeward bearing, then. Not much time to waste."  
“Wait!" The word seems to ring out from above them all, and it's only after a moment that everyone turns to look at Steven. "Don’t go yet. You’ve all been friends for so long, there has to be some way to do it that you can agree on.”  
Labradorite raises herself to her full imposing height--nobody realized how much she was slouching to fit the room until she does--then takes a long step towards him. She bends, putting them inches apart and face to face, so that his reflection is doubled in her mismatched eyes. “You have your mother’s battlefield voice, Steven,” she says.  
“Oh—uh—thank you,” he says, much more quietly.  
“Listen,” Labradorite appeals to the group, each of her four hands doing something conflicting but the one that commands the most attention being pressed between her eyes as if her head is aching. “I was presumptuous. Something needs to be done—maybe I’m not the best person to decide what. But you—” (addressed, by gesture, to Pearl and Garnet) “—and Rose did win a war without me, so…we can talk about this. We can talk about…that, right?  
“About…what exactly?” Pearl is carrying their collective hesitancy in the postures of her fingers, all of which softly bow as she points at absolutely nothing.  
“How the rebellion succeeded.”  
The conversation goes through its umpteenth uncomfortable pause.  
Amethyst looks askance at her two elder teammates. “So like…should we show her or…”  
***  
Labradorite’s gaze sweeps across the dome of the room, taking in the hundreds of bubbles, pink blue red purple pink, that dot its breadth. "What is this?"  
For once, Pearl bears explaining like a chore.  
Their guest is silent for several seconds. She can’t take her eyes off of them. “I can’t believe they would do something like this,” she finally murmurs.  
Garnet fiddles with her visor. “It wasn’t the first time they’d kicked us back right where it hurt. It wasn’t the last, either.” Her fiddling grows more vigorous until finally takes the visor off altogether. Her eyes are pinched with emotion. “Labradorite, _this_ is what they’re capable of. Do as you will, but I can’t watch it happen again.”  
Four hands light on Garnet’s shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she almost whispers. “I’m sorry.”  
“You see then, why—”  
“Yes.” She turns away, seeming lost in thought. But then, she turns back, eyes bright, fists pulling memories from the air. “But sacred Pleiades, remember the _beginning?_ I mean, it was something! It was hundreds of gems, suddenly realizing that they didn’t have to kill and die and destroy for somebody else’s empire. Really _seeing_ each other for the first time. Look, the war was awful--I'm not arguing that. But _we_ were great! Don't you remember?”  
“Every day,” Garnet hears a voice say behind her. She turns to look at Pearl, who is standing stock still, a few steps apart from Steven and Connie. Her eyes look…bright and hot somehow, blue flames in the dim red light.  
“It couldn’t have happened anywhere else. There’s something about this planet—I feel it too, same as Moon felt it. There’s no place in the universe quite like this.”  
Steven moves to her side. He’s sporting a case of the old bright eyes too. “Maybe you could bring your friends here! You could all live on earth where it’s safe, and if anybody tried to bother them, we’d…well, we’d make sure they didn’t!”  
The look on Labradorite’s face is pure confusion. “The last thing you need is more gems here—what do you think your team are even trying to do?”  
“Huh?”  
Pearl breaks her trance and reaches for him. “Steven, the rebellion wasn’t about us. Your mother wanted gems to leave this planet for the use of its own life forms. The colonists who joined the rebellion stayed because they would be broken if they went back.” She started out speaking straight to him, conveying his mother’s philosophy in heartfelt tones, but she squints for a moment, swallows, and has to switch safely to a general lecture. “Just because we can travel to any planet doesn’t mean we can use any planet for whatever we want—even if it’s something important.”  
Garnet breaks her recovering silence. “Earth always meant freedom. It was a place where we could just be whoever we were. But it wasn’t ours.”  
“Wasn’t here for the taking,” Pearl adds.  
“And wasn’t home,” Labradorite finishes.  
There's a pause before Garnet re-finishes: "Yet." She clears her throat. “In some cases.”  
“Besides,” Amethyst says, finally picking up on something she feels prepared to comment on. “It’s not gonna do that much good to actually…solve these problems if we only solve them here, right?”  
Labradorite points at her. “I still do not have a complete understanding of who exactly you are, but you’re right and I like you.”  
“We can go through what you missed,” Garnet abruptly says, nearly interrupting her. “The end of the rebellion, the attempted re-invasion, all of it. Stay the night and we’ll give you whatever advice we can—you can tell them it came from us. I don’t know if I can be the one to take this fight back to homeworld, Labra. Can I call you Labra? The full thing’s kind of a mouthful.”  
“Yeah, sure,” she says, looking dazzled by this sudden change in attitude. “It’s fine.”  
“I came to be on this planet. Like I told you before, I have a duty to it. But if you will listen to what has happened here, then I’ll help you however I can.” She looks down and back up again. "It's too soon to say it only could've happened here. This is the only place we've ever tried it."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Key-Traders](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9350294) by [FatalCookies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FatalCookies/pseuds/FatalCookies)




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